What are any books/games/toys/activities/other I can help my 5-year-old how just finished preschool and will be starting kindergarten in the fall get a head start learning math and science this summer and, most importantly, have some fun while doing it?
Readit News
If you’re looking for a more structured approach, I counted marbles on a carpet with one kid for a while, every night. They put up with it but pretty much hated it. I could tell the learning wasn’t super deep. When I tried that with the second one, they pretty much rolled the marbles under the furniture.
What I’ve learned about kids is they are so different that a single approach may only be optimal for 1 in 5 of them (I made up that number). Which is why I wish I could home school them, because no teacher or school I’ve found can seem to customize their lesson plan enough.
We home schooled during the pandemic and the amount they learned in one year was incredible. Tailoring the curriculum per kid was extremely effective but not sustainable so now they are back in a private school but they enjoy the social aspect much better.
I believe this is largely why private tutoring can also produce exceptional results.
That works once and then they demand all the froot loops. They might not be able to do math but they are still criminals.
Jokes aside, sport is a usual goto if the kid is interested. Counting points or asking by how much the other teams is ahead.
> Jokes aside
Where's the joke?
One result of this could be your child may be bored and could get into trouble and could result in them not enjoying school. I don't know your kid so obviously that is one path, there are many. If your school can recognize advancement and handle it then this is a moot point.
A few weeks ago, I spoke with the principal at one of the most popular[0] public elementary schools in San Francisco. She told me:
- she's only had a student skip a grade once ever
- no matter how far ahead a child is, a kindergarten teacher will not teach any first grade content
[0] as measured by ratio of applicants to spots
Bingo, bango, bongo. This is the case.
The problem is that children need structure and guidance if they're ever going to do things that aren't just mindless 'fill-time' sort of activities.
We had a hard time with our kids, because we let their interests guide their activities. The problem was - whenever they expressed an interest, external pressure and expectation is that they go ALL IN on whatever it was. Baseball? Better practice with a private coach or else they'll never make the travel team, and you'll never play for your school team at all if you don't do the travel team. Jiu jitsu? Better enroll in private lessons or else they'll never make competition, and you'll never get mat time if you don't join competition.
And it's not that the expectation was that they would immediately rise to the top and be highly competitive. It was the judgment, overt judgment and criticism from other parents when we didn't express an interest in all that nonsense.
The world for young parents is difficult, and it's easy to get sucked into the trap of 'my kid likes this so I should push them as hard as possible'. Because that's the default attitude among most people, from what I can tell.
Rant over.
To OP: If your kid expresses an interest in math/science, provide them with open-ended toys and games. If they don't and you're just doing it to raise the next Einstein, don't do it.
If you see some particular math/ science engagement I’ve found Magic School Bus (books / 90s show/ recent reboot )provides an excellent framing.
The Singapore Math Series helped my daughter rocket a few years ahead of her classmates (your mileage may vary here).
The most fundamental skill any elementary school child can learn is how to read. Every single thing they learn in school will at least benefit from a strong reading ability, and this goes for math and science as well.
The biggest place where young students fall down in math, is story problems, not the arithmetic itself. Being able to read a passage and correctly interpret what it is asking is far and away the most important skill a young child can acquire at that age.
I promise you every kid will have some subject they like. They will also ask questions. If they’re encouraged, they’ll want to learn more even if they’re 3 years old.
My kids learned about friction because I told my wife our car brakes need to be done. Kids asked what that means and I told them how brakes work. Then they asked why brakes make a car stop and that’s how they learned about friction. Next few days they point all things with low and high friction (socks on wooden floor was especially fun). One day the 6y casually mentioned to his friend that his cycle was slow because of friction and needed more grease.
Answer questions and get them curios. I promise you they won’t even realize it’s “teaching” and they’ll love it.
IMO, everyone should know the basics of a wide range of things from cooking to statistics. It’s just a question of diminishing returns. Failing to understand the basics of say investing is really costly even if all they do is dump 90% of their money into a low cost S&P 500 fund and forget about it that’s vastly better than what most people do.
The same applies to school, teach your kids the basics of reading and math let’s them coast for years.
My 8-yo son HATES math. I know a lot of kids don't like it, but this kid has a visceral disdain for it. But I know the things (video games, media, etc) he does like and I've wanted to get better at game programming for awhile, so we set aside time to design a game he can play that - don't tell him - incorporates some of the topics on his teacher's lessons for the next month (which area available via a web portal).
His job is primarily to design characters and levels (on paper) and then I implement them. Then his job is to "test" the game. He knows there's math being injected into the game and it's very simple but this is all about the process. Suddenly he can show and tell his friends he's making a game with his friends and along the way he's getting more interested in programming.
This is just one idea. It's sneaky but seems to be working for us.
- buy a bunch of math manipulatives (number blocks, base 10 blocks, Cuisenaire rods)
- watch the TV show 'Numberblocks' on Netflix or BBC (there are ~50 episodes, and you can rewatch them)
- use books like Beast Academy 1A and 1B if your kid is ready
- Khan Academy Kids (free app)
- Dreambox (paid app: $150 for 10 years) if your kid is ready
- Schoolhouse Rock (songs and video): ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSRRAHvSQBo ). Related to skip-counting (counting by 2s, 3s etc), which some kids really like and you can practice anywhere you can count (count the stairs). Skip-counting leads to learning the multiplication tables (flash cards).
- Illustrated books about polyhedra. This may be a little advanced, but the pictures are nice. And it leads to Zometools ( https://www.zometool.com/ ) and software versions of the same.
- Books with number illustrations. You have to look for them ( https://designobserver.com/feature/herbert-spencer-and-the-b... ).
- Any illustrated book about symbols? I remember how my kids wanted to know the names and sounds of the IPA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe... ). This may be just a quirk of my family tho. And it's not exactly math, but being comfortable with associating symbols with meaning might make math a little more comfortable.
This is what my kids liked, but every kid has different interests and talents and of course you should build on that. My kids weren't interesting in Lego or Erector Sets or breadboarding LEDs or shooting baskets playing with dolls. If they had been we would have done that.
It's not math, but another thing my kids liked was language-learning software like Rosetta Stone ( https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-language-learning-softw... ).
The episodes are also available on Youtube, though you have to dig to find the full episodes since there are many compilations that are just snippets. Here are the playlists that actually have full episodes (though not always in order, unfortunately):
Red Level 1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviEpYtgsxNhSu... Orange Level 2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviEor1JJ9oiJw... Yellow Level 3: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviErTKxhY3IGf... Green Level 4: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviEqiv2RFTd7K... Blue Level 5: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviErvKa4-7x8E... Season 5: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviEpLQxq7gp_c... Specials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9swKX1PviErsBiq9poHx...